"Breeding-back" aims to restore or immitate extinct animals by selective breeding. This blog provides general information, the facts behind myths and news from various projects.

Friday, 30 January 2015

Charles Hamilton Smith's aurochs painting

Holidays
begun, so I am going to have plenty of time for the blog the next few weeks.
Therefore I’ll have the time also for longer posts, so the next part of the
Dedomestication Series is to come soon.

Everybody
who is at least superficially interested in the aurochs will be familiar with
Charles Hamilton Smith’s Aurochs painting. C.H. Smith (1776-1859) was a
naturalist, illustrator, soldier and spy. You can find a lot of his
illustrations on the web, his aurochs among it.

Smith’s
painting is popular and important because it is the most detailed and
anatomically precise historical aurochs painting we know of. But alas, it is of
course not contemporaneous and not based on a live aurochs. Nevertheless, that artwork
is still of value because it is based on a painting that Smith purchased at
Augsburg (therefore the painting is often referred to as “Augsburg aurochs”),
that, according to Smith, dated back to the first quarter of the 16th
century and was painted after a live aurochs. I think it is possible that the
aurochs that painting was drawn after was one of the five aurochs from Poland
that were exhibited in Nürnberg in 1501, because the aurochs had been extinct on
southern German territory since around 1400. However, it is also possible that
the creator of the original drew it in Poland. Anyway, the original is lost and
we can only infer what it looked like by investigating C.H. Smith’s work.

Usually it
is referred to as a copy of the original. But what is meant by “copy”? Did
Smith copy each detail by tracking out the original or did he draw his own
version by using the original as a guide? Smith drew all his animals in a
similar manner: complete or near profile view, legs in an antiparallel
position, and always the same fur pattern. Often the tail hair is waved (f.e.
look at his Tarpan foal). The eyes are always the same either. And I found a
suspicious detail in his aurochs: the position or length of the legs does
proportionally not make sense. It almost looks like the hoof of the left
hindquarter is positioned directly under or even behind the middle axis of the
trunk, while the right hindquarter seems to be more on the left side than the
left foot. The forequarters have the same problem but not to the same extent. Some
other works by Smith show the same proportional error (f.e. see here http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2AuNExqf8tE/TrkijEYIRTI/AAAAAAAAAlo/LVqxI8A6EPI/s1600/Hamilton%2BSmith%2B1839%2BNew%2BHolland%2Bdingo.jpg,
or his Tarpan). Therefore I believe Smith did indeed draw his own version and
used the original as a guideline and did not track it out.

But that
does not mean that he didn’t take a careful look at what the animal looks like
he was painting. The trunk is short and the legs long, resulting in the
“squarely built” proportions typical for the aurochs, the shoulder area is
heavier than the slim waist, the bull is muscular overall and shown in a
dynamic posture, the dewlap is very short, the horn shape is typical of an
aurochs and the forelocks are prominent. So the animal he drew shows the main
aurochs features and I see no reason to think the original painting was based
on a primitive domestic bull or a hybrid bull as also has been suggested. You
might be wondering why Smith’s aurochs has a brown colour. In fact, according
to Smith, the original had a sooty black colour with a white chin – I don’t
know why he decided to give his version a brown fur colour then. The fact that
only the chin was white on the original indicates that the live aurochs it was
based on was an older individual, as the muzzle ring of aging bulls often gets
reduced from top down. As the original lacks the eel stripe, I assume that a)
the live aurochs bull did not have an eel stripe, b) the eel stripe was very
reduced due to his age and therefore not a prominent detail, c) the artist didn’t
care about it or d) the artist chose that the stripe would not be visible from
that view. The white ring around the lower half of the eye might be a hint for
the presence of white aureole as some wild type-coloured calves and primitive
breeds, the Vietnamese Banteng and numerous other bovids have it, but I think
Smith just intended to indicate the eye itself. If the original bull had a
white aureole, he would have probably mentioned it just as the white chin. The
head looks rather paedomorphic, but one single drawing is not enough to dispute
something that is evidenced by dozens of osteologic remains. Rather I think the
shape of the head of Hamilton Smith’s aurochs is an artefact of stylisation and
perhaps exaggeration of details visible on the original – such as the bulk of
the tissue on the lower jaw, which would make the snout appear shorter than it
is. Anyway, the shape of the head confirms that male aurochs had a head with
more or less a lot of tissue and not a lanky head like a domestic steer. The hump
is not very well pronounced, but it is still apparent that Smith tried to imply
that the shoulder area of the original was heavier than that of the waist. All
in all, I think that there is nothing at Charles Hamilton Smith’s aurochs that
contradicts what we know about the aurochs’ appearance from other sources. Rather
it confirms it.

So, what
did the original look like? I assume that all the aurochs traits the bull on
Smith’s painting shows were present on the original painting as well, otherwise
it would be quite a coincidence that imprecisions, stylisation or imagination
of Smith resulted in aurochs traits, that, at the same time, were not present
in the original that was drawn after a live aurochs. Probably the original also
showed the animal in more or less profile view, otherwise Smith could have hardly
deduced that the aurochs had a short trunk with long legs and get the horn
shape right. Whether the aurochs on the original was in the same posture of a
fast walking gait or maybe stood still or ran cannot be ascertained. However,
Smith’s version indicates that the aurochs was a swift and active creature, so
perhaps the original did not show it in a boring, static posture. I did not
find information on any other details on the painting beside the aurochs and
“remains of coats of arms” (van Vuure). Perhaps the background was like on
Smith’s work: bushes, a pond or lake behind, with some reed and more bushes. Of
course he could have just invented it and the original had a totally different
or no background at all.

During the
next weeks, I will do a GIMP painting that will illustrate how I imagine what
the original “Augsburg aurochs” might have looked like.

As
mentioned above, the original painting is lost. There is no trace of it after
it was sold after Smith’s death in 1859. It is not known whether it still
exists and where, and who owns it. I don’t know if anyone ever seriously tried
to track down its way after it was sold. Maybe it is possible to find out who
purchased it, and to locate descendants of the owner or find out subsequent
owners if it was sold again and again. Of course it could have been destroyed.
But maybe it is lurking around covered in dust on some attic instead being
exhibited in a museum because it was not recognized that it doesn’t show “just
some bull” but in fact an extinct animal in a more detailed way than any other
known artwork. Let’s hope it still exists and will one day be rediscovered.

3 comments:

I read before that much of Charles H.Smith's belongings were donated to a University in Plymouth, England. I hope the painting is sitting somewhere waiting for someone to realize it's importance.Haven't found what the other Augsburg Aurochs is. https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5268/5639567351_2e031caab8_b.jpgIt's from the book Bovidae (Turi in the Czech language). Text under the picture says: Augsburg Aurochs – the only one modern picture of the Aurochs by an unknown painter, from the time around 1525 year.

It's from the Rewilding Europe gallery, is it? I suspect that this artwork is just a copy of Hamilton Smiths drawing; it can't be the original from the 16th century because that one is was an oil painting.

Dalibor Dostal, the founder of Rewilding Europe told me it was from the Czech book,Bovidea. The book describes it as "Augsburg" by an unknown painter.It's obviously not the painting that Smith described since it's an etching.I thought it could be a more accurate depiction of the painting by Smith, but I doubt the author would have gotten hold of it.

About this blog

This blog is on everything related to the so-called “breeding-back” of extinct animals: From the extinct animals themselves, over their often domestic descendants and dedomestication to news and facts about various breeding-back projects, reports and photos from my own breeding-back related trips. I try to have a balanced and fact-based approach to this subject and to dismantle many of the popular myths. Enjoy!

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About me

My major interest always have been extinct animals, from dinosaurs to Pleistocene megafauna and more recent extinctions. Besides that I am interested in evolution, genetics and ecology.
I am also an amateur animal artist, making drawings and models mostly of extinct animals.